How I got started

How to create a web site for small businesses or family groups.

I wanted to evaluate the best software for creating some web sites:

1. A web site for social networking with my family (Blogs, Photo Gallerys)
2. A wiki for documenting knowledge
3. Small business web site using open source software on Apache and Linux. (still under way)

Capture the process on my own wiki

Since I wanted to use the wiki to capture all the tips and tricks I learned through this process I started my evaluating and installing wiki software. I have made my wiki available to the public with all my notes.

Build Family Web Site

Next, I evaluated Content Management Software (CMS) for hosting web sites. I wanted a social networking website (my example blog) that would allow some content to be available only to authenticated users (for example: our friends for the family site). I also wanted support for a photo gallery (here is mine), videos and other documents. Finally I wanted to tie these all together with an integrated framework. Here is the first version of my family site (sorry but some of the content requires authentication)

As I started to expose my users to the web sites I learned the importance of easy of use and simplifying things.